Description
Serviceberries are a beloved food and medicine plant native to Turtle Island. These are small, shrub-like trees who flower spectacularly in spring, offer sweet berries at the start of summer, and turn a beautiful array of orange and red in the fall.
With coppicing they can become bushy, making a larger share of the berries accessible to human pickers. Beyond nutritious fruit, their leaves, bark, and roots are medicinal.
They prefer moist but well-drained soil and grow between 15′ and 25′ in full to partial sun. They are susceptible to Gymnosporangium fungi, but will produce fruit even if infected. To limit the spread of this fungus it is recommended to not plant juniper species nearby, as the fungus uses both plants to complete their lifecycle.
We gather serviceberries in Western NY every year from Amelanchier arborea and A. canadensis, both of whom are the mother trees of the seedlings we’re offering here. We planted seeds from the trees with the best-tasting and most abundant fruit.
